


Bonding

by parachutewoman



Category: Torchwood
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:08:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24597259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parachutewoman/pseuds/parachutewoman
Summary: Owen, Tosh, Gwen and Ianto have a drunken conversation about their sex lives.
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Comments: 9
Kudos: 75





	Bonding

**Author's Note:**

> There is no real plot here. I just wanted to write this conversation.

Forty-eight hours wiped from their memory. Two whole days where literally anything could have happened. Gone.

It was a potential security risk, an omen for impending danger, a sign that Retcon had infected the water supply and, quite honestly, not one of them seemed to care.

If Jack had not been distracted by the mysterious wooden box on his desk, he might have considered whether that was a problem all its own.

It was late though, and Jack didn’t feel like an intervention, so he gave the four members of Torchwood permission to leave so he could be alone with his thoughts.

Tosh and Gwen had linked arms around their two male colleagues as soon as they’d reached the surface. With little effort, they dragged them to the nearest pub and settled in for a couple of drinks before heading home.

Four Peronis, three double gin and tonics, two large glasses of Pinot Grigio and four Camden Hells later, the quartet of alien hunters remained loyal to their spot, slumped over the booth, giggling over the fiasco with the Sleeper agents. 

“Let’s play never have I ever,” Tosh suddenly proposed.

Ianto’s eyes rolled into the back of his skull. “Let’s not.”

“Go on,” Gwen pressed, poking her Welsh colleague in the ribs. “It’ll be fun!”

“It won’t be,” he protested.

Owen smirked. “Worried you’ll hit the unit limit?”

Gwen and Tosh beamed at each other across the table, enjoying the thrill of entering into a conversation that Ianto clearly wanted to avoid.

“We have an intravenous drip back at the hub if you get alcohol poisoning,” Owen offered, cocking his eyebrow.

“I’m not playing,” Ianto replied, placing his glass down in hopes that would be the end of it.

It wasn’t.

“Okay then,” Tosh sang. “Why don’t we go round and guess each other’s numbers?”

“Numbers?” Ianto asked.

“Sexual partners,” Owen answered, also failing to hide his utter glee at the expense of his coworker’s discomfort. He’d always avoided asking Ianto out to these after-work drinks, so it was a nice surprise to discover his awkwardness was actually quite fun to be around.

Ianto’s face was aghast. “Why would we do that?”

“It’s fun!” Tosh giggled. “It’s just a game.”

“About my sex life.”

“About _all_ our sex lives,” Tosh corrected him.

Gwen smirked. “Don’t think you’ll do as well out of that game then, Ianto?”

He wisely didn’t answer.

“Okay,” Tosh started. “I think Owen has bagged about sixty.”

“Sixty?!” Gwen and Ianto exclaimed in unison.

Owen gave Tosh a knowing smile.

“No – thirty, tops,” Gwen argued. “There’s not enough time in the day.”

Owen laughed. “Sixty eight.”

“So close,” Ianto muttered. Before Owen could clock that particularly immature joke, Tosh threw her hand across the table and grabbed the doctor’s bottle of beer.

“You told me sixty!”

“That was three months ago,” he casually retorted.

“You’re lying,” Gwen said, tipsily punching him in the shoulder. “Okay - Tosh, I think yours is twenty.”

The tech guru slipped her a wink.

“Five,” Owen said, holding out a hand and twitching each finger as he cycled through his deduction. “One at school, one lesbian encounter at college, a shag during freshers’ week, Mary, Tommy.”

Tosh glowered at Owen and then turned to Ianto expectedly, but the Welshman defiantly shook his head.

“I’m not engaging in this.”

“Twenty eight,” Tosh replied to the rest of the team, to which Gwen threw her a messy high five.

“Well, well,” Owen murmured. “Someone’s got around, hasn’t she?”

“I’m thirty two and single,” she reminded him with a semi-serious grimace.

"Did you sleep with Tommy?" Gwen asked. "I mean, it's fine if you did." 

Tosh gave her a smile. "Our last night together. Funny really, I only knew him for a total of four days.”

“That’s longer than most of Owen’s relationships,” Ianto cut in.

“Oi you!” Owen spat. “If you aren’t playing then you don’t get to comment.”

Ianto threw his hands up in faux surrender.

“So, now, Gwen Cooper,” Owen said, thinking aloud. “I would guess yours would be about average.”

“What does that mean?” Gwen asked, her bottom lip tort.

“Well, you’re the only one of us with a fiancé but you don’t seem the type to pick the fruit before you’ve had a squeeze.”

“I hate you.”

“Thirty,” Tosh suggested.

“Tosh!”

“Thirteen!” she rushed out in attempt to keep her colleague calm.

“Fifteen,” Ianto guessed.

“Oh, you’re playing now, are you?” Gwen growled, throwing him a glare.

“Yeah, I’ll say sixteen,” Owen said, betting on it only semi-confidently.

“Ten,” Gwen muttered, though the team wasn’t quite sure whether she felt the number was too high or low. “I guess it’s _Ianto’s_ go now."

Ianto cursed under his breath, knowing he shouldn’t have let his competitiveness - and the beer - get the better of him.

“Fuck, it’s either two or _a hundred_ and two,” Owen gibed.

Ianto let out a low, frustrated sigh. “I can confirm it’s somewhere in between.”

“So, it’s more than two?” Tosh pried, sneaking a look at her team members to gauge their reactions.

Ianto’s mouth gaped open. “ _Of course_ it’s more than two.”

“Nothing wrong with it just being two,” Gwen chimed.

“There _is_ ,” Owen started but before he could continue, a large thud announced Gwen’s foot had met its target.

“It’s more than two,” Ianto repeated, hoping that would halt any impending lecture on sexual liberation.

“Three,” Owen countered.

Tosh and Gwen tried to hide their giggling, to little avail.

“Nine,” Tosh finally replied.

Gwen thought out loud for an extra couple minutes before estimating between five and fifteen - which Owen pointed out was, firstly, against the rules, and secondly, ten.

Ianto looked them all up and down, obviously coming to terms with the fact that, while he was under no real obligation to tell them how many people he’d slept with, he was still somewhat compelled to do so. He debated lying, like he usually would.

“Seven.”

“Lucky for some!” said Tosh, clinking her tumbler against Ianto’s pint glass.

“You seem the serial monogamist type,” Gwen added.

He didn’t answer that.

“What do you think Jack’s number is?” Tosh proposed.

“Oh god!” Gwen cried. “Thousands, surely.”

“Well you never know,” Owen proposed. “Maybe the juror he met at the Rosenberg trial and the trapeze artist who could tie a knot with his tongue were the same dude? What if he adds them in bulk if he shagged them at the same time? Does he even count aliens in the same category?”

They sat in silence, thinking out the implications of what Owen had said, and how strange it was that they were all perfectly valid addendums to their little game.

“It’d still be in the thousands,” Ianto assured them, immediately dreading being the first one to respond.

“He must have told _you_ ,” Owen asked.

Ianto felt his shoulders tense up as the final word drew everyone’s eyes back to him.

The medic then drooped his head forwards and looked deep into Ianto’s eyes as if peering at him over half-moon glasses. His voice came out sounding like every NHS sexual health clinician he’d ever met. “You and your partner should have had a frank and open conversation about your sexual history before engaging in _intercourse,_ Mr. Jones.”

As he heard himself reply, Ianto hated his former self for entertaining the fourth beer. “I’ve been reliably informed that Jack’s body has produced immunities from venereal diseases that don’t even exist on this planet yet.”

“That’s what all the boys say,” Gwen said with a motherly tut.

“Still, good to cover the basics though,” Owen chirruped. “I know I would’ve liked to know exactly what I was meant to be doing - and _not doing -_ the first time I did it with a bloke.”

Gwen’s lip curled. “I didn’t know you had a sexual experience with a man before?”

“It was an experience alright.”

“Well good for you!” she said, nudging him affectionately, to which Owen let out a sincere chortle.

“Have you ever been with a girl, Gwen?” Tosh asked, sipping happily on the remnants of her Gordon’s gin and tonic.

“Yes,” Gwen replied, suddenly acting all coy. “But also no.”

“It’s either one or the other,” Ianto noted.

“It really isn’t,” Gwen shot back.

Tosh pursed her lips. “It _is_ though.”

Before they began that age old debate, Owen turned his attention back to his male colleague, refusing to let the coffee boy hide behind Gwen and Tosh’s imminent discussion about scissoring.

“And you?” Owen barked at him. “First time was with Jack, right?”

Ianto frowned. “No, I’ve already said I’ve had sex with other people.”

Owen hummed as a sudden thought entered his intoxicated brain. “I’ve always meant to ask you about that actually. Did Lisa, you know, have any _needs_ when she was locked in-“

“Owen!” Tosh and Gwen screamed, both hurling themselves across their corners of the table to slap him on the shoulder.

Ianto made the mental note to burn Owen’s hand on the coffee machine tomorrow morning.

“Was Jack your first time with a man though?” Gwen asked in a desperate bid to drive the conversation as far away from Owen’s repulsive imagination as possible.

Ianto remained silent, hoping the previous remark might give him leeway not to answer.

“It’s fine if it is,” Tosh probed. “I guess it’s different if you’re in a relationship.”

“Is it a relationship?” Gwen asked, shooting a tentative glance at Ianto.

“I don’t know what it is,” he replied reluctantly.

Owen scoffed. “Good to hear Jack is just as obtuse in bed as he is on the job then.”

Tosh pinched Ianto’s bicep playfully. “Vell, vell! Tu es officially part of our bizexual clique.”

Gwen spluttered into her glass.

“I don’t think I like other men,” Ianto murmured, paying Tosh a smile for what he could only assume was her genuine good will. “I think it’s just Jack.”

“So our boss _is_ your first time with a man?” Owen quickly fired back.

Ianto tried to fix his eyes on Owen. He wasn’t going to be intimidated into revealing anything about himself. None of them had the right to know.

Even so, with Owen’s eyes boring deep into his, he could feel his mind become intent on slipping. He _knew_ the actual answer to Owen’s question didn’t quite line up with what he had just implied.

Well, it made sense to _him_. But he doubted it would to _them._

Ianto sheepishly looked away.

The medic threw his hands up in the air, only barely missing his pint. “So you _have_ been with other men. You _do_ swing both ways.”

“Bisexual!” Tosh hissed.

“Whatever - you've slept with men other than Jack!”

“Yes but -”

“Then I’m afraid the case is closed. You’re into men.”

“I’ve only been in - I’ve only had feelings for one man,” Ianto tried to explain.

Tosh and Gwen tried to approach the conversation but Owen was having none of it. “How many women have you been serious about?”

Ianto paused. “One?”

“Well then, you’re like for like,” Owen told him. “You don’t even _know_ any other men, Ianto.”

“You’ve also set a really high standard for yourself,” Gwen added, still quite drunk. “If they all need to look like Jack then only a couple men in the world are going to qualify.”

Ianto shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

In an attempt to comfort him, Tosh rested her head on his shoulder, possibly to shield him from Owen. He couldn’t tell. It just made his arm numb but, like everything Tosh tried to do, he appreciated the effort.

The conversation ended and the team slowly made their ways out of the pub.

As he strolled over to the taxi rank, he debated whether circling back to the hub to see if Jack was still awake. Pausing in the center of the Roald Dahl Plass, he wondered if he had considered it because he wanted it or because, by now, it had become almost habit to do so.

Was that a relationship? He wasn’t sure.

Was Jack really the only man he would ever love? Maybe.

For now, at least, he didn’t mind not knowing.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. Kudos/comments are appreciated!


End file.
